The Dolls of New Albion
by Abraxas27
Summary: The tale of four generations of the McAlistair family, and how one man's actions changed the fate of an entire city. Lyrics of Paul Shapera's "Steampunk Opera" (


-Act 1-

(Scene: The steampunk city of New Albion. Our Narrator appears to take us on a guided tour. The music is a tango with some industrial elements lightly in the background)

NARRATOR:  
Several hundred years before  
A gambler and a monk embarked  
On a long trek through the endless prairies of the North  
They had a fierce debate  
About God and chance and fate  
and to resolve it agreed a game of cards indeed be played

The game went on all day  
And through the next and next they played  
And around them a shelter was built to shield the rain  
A street around the shelter formed  
Then a church, a house, a bar  
And that is how the city of New Albion was born

New Albion today  
With bustling streets, machines, cafes  
And the nice, the wise, the eccentric and insane  
The Mafia's run by  
A red haired dwarf with just one eye  
Whose affairs he decides with a pair of silver dice

Over the Zeppelin Union Pilots  
A castrati boss presides  
And we hear his song each afternoon as he flies by  
There's prisons made of lead  
And gargoyles of iron shreds  
And Annabelle McAlistair who's raising up the dead  
Annabelle McAlistair who's raising up the dead

The Lodge on Ashland Street  
Is where the Alchemists Guild meets  
And to join you have to craft a glass pearl from a young girl's dream  
A group of thieves they heard  
Broke in the lodge to steal the pearls  
But In the morning they were found there sitting staring unperturbed

The twilight fog they say  
An aphrodisiac contains  
Nonsense, but yet they copulate in doorways anyway  
There's inventors and inbred  
In upper class it's been said  
And Annabelle McAlistair who's raising up the dead.  
Annabelle McAlistair who's raising up the dead.

(Scene: Inside Annabelle McAlister's laboratory. It's littered with all manner of Victorian era scientific equipment and machinery. Seated in a chair in the center of it all is a machinelike mannequin. Annabelle is frantically rushing about the lab in preparation.)

ANNABELLE:  
Winding all the dials and the wires and the spires and the  
tests for the connections and injections still to run  
Capacitors and meters and the alkali and beakers  
The restating of equations for the phase about to come

Please come back to me there's so much we could be  
Please come back, with voltage i invoke  
Please come back from empty cracks and berths of black  
Come to me, I'm summoning the Ghost

Be my angel, my angel  
Be my angel, rescue me  
be my angel, my angel  
be an angel be with me

chorus:  
Please come back from bowels of black  
From silent shores to me once more  
Through veils and gates and seas of slate  
To blood wet moors where i await ashore

Years of all my theories and hypothesis and inquiries  
No gathering cadavers and they kicked me out of school  
All alone with theorems and experiments and endless tests  
Years in labs and numberlands but now I've reached the goal

Please come back so we can have a life at last  
Please come back, i grab at heaven's throat  
Please come back, i beckon, beg and cry and laugh  
Come to me, I'm summoning the ghost

Be my angel, my angel  
Be my angel, rescue me  
be my angel, be my angel  
be an angel be

chorus:  
Please come back from bowels of black  
from silent shores to me once more  
Through veils and gates and seas of slate  
To blood wet moors where i await ashore

(She sings quietly and tenderly to the mannequin construct)

Please come speak to me  
Please come speak to me  
All the things we can share and conceive  
if you'll come speak to me

I remember you from school  
You were dashing and i so uncool  
You didn't know i was alive until that one night  
we spoke and you kissed me

But then i was expelled  
You married her as well  
and now you've died, but i can bring you back to life  
and soon you'll speak to me

(She gradually gets more and more impassioned)

Be my angel, be my angel  
Be my angel, rescue me  
Be my angel, be my angel  
Be an angel be with me (3x)

Please come back so we can have a life at last  
Please come back, i grab at heaven's throat  
Please come back, i beckon, beg and cry and laugh  
Come to me, i'm summoning the ghost

chorus:  
Please come back from bowels of black  
From silent shores to me once more  
Through veils and gates and seas of slate  
To blood wet moors where i await ashore

(Annabelle throws the switch)

NARRATOR:  
And so around 3 AM,  
a recently deceased man  
found himself wound in the land of living again

Bound in a body,  
of gears and wheels but oddly  
he has no voice and his steel joints barely can bend

The one sound he makes in fact  
He streams radio broadcasts  
He plays a country station if you give him a pat

Our dearest Annabel is  
quite thrilled and ecstatic  
She has a friend who just was dead and yet she brought back

(Narrator sings to an oblivious Annabelle who is dressing the life size mechanical doll up to take out)

What may please does not content  
all resolves but never ends  
all that comforts is not true  
all you love does not love you

(Annabelle takes her doll with her everywhere like a romantic partner. The Mannequin itself is quite stiff and helpless.)

ANNABELLE:  
I have a dolly and we like to go on walks  
We like to stroll around the park all while he listens to me talk  
about the people and the places that i never got to see  
'cause i wouldn't leave my house, but that's before he was with me

We share a world, which is wonderful to see it's like a dream  
where no one calls me failure if i don't succeed

I have a dolly it's like flowers in the spring  
and but no matter how i talk to him he never says a thing

NARRATOR:  
What may please does not content  
all resolves but never ends  
all that comforts is not true  
all you love does not love you

ANNABELLE:  
I have a dolly and he goes with me outside  
which used to be a problem for me oh but now i never mind  
Ice cream and carriages i always thought were nice  
but never had someone to share them with because the lab's my life

Annabelle no friends you must be brilliant and the best  
you must be better and industrious, or you are worthless

But now i have dolly a dear friend with whom i go  
out for walk and talks but he's mute and just plays the radio

(Jasper is playing a song to communicate but Annabelle is unaware of it)

JASPER:  
Elysium  
The place the when your sorrows end  
Why'd you bring me here again

ANNABELLE:  
I have a dolly who can keep me company  
We go to shows, parades and cabarets though people stare at me  
But I've shown that i am brilliant and I've conquered life and death  
The only thing my father said is that one must be a success

And now I've got a friend, a silent clockwork double  
who can be there for me to lean on when i feel sad and troubled

I have a dolly, and he's very stabling if not a little just too distant  
cause he never says a thing...

(The Narrator tries to give Annabelle advice but Annabelle is unaware of her)

NARRATOR:  
What you hold may wish to go  
What you believe may not be so  
All that brings you piece of mind  
may not stay for a long time

What may please does not content  
All resolves but never ends  
All that comforts is not true  
And all you love does not love you

(Annabelle has arrived home, exhausted after so much gallivanting about with her doll. She sits in front of him trying for some kind of real communication)

ANNABELLE:  
Can't you speak to me?  
Won't you speak to me?  
All the things we could share and conceive  
If you'd just speak to me

(Jasper plays the same song as before but now Annabelle is actually listening and can hear it)

JASPER:  
Elysium  
The place the when your sorrows end  
Why'd you bring me here  
Oh why'd you bring me here  
Why'd you bring me here again?

(Annabelle is taken aback and understanding dawns on her. She becomes depressed.)

ANNABELLE:  
Ghosts of dreams, ghosts of memory  
that will not leave or lay in quiet  
Ghosts that cry about the life  
you let go by

Ghosts of pasts of little girls who  
learned their math, grasped their facts  
Tried their best to reach success  
just as they were asked

The girl learns to hide, deep inside  
of fractions and facts and worlds of math  
A long lonely land she can understand  
Annabelle in Numberland

You could have been my angel  
been my angel. been my angel and been with me  
Could have been my angel  
been my angel, been my angel and rescued me

Ghosts of love you never knew, you  
just construed like well penned plays  
Ghosts of scenes, embraces, things  
you only knew in dreamt up days

Ghosts of frowns for little girls when  
friends came round to waste her time  
Ghosts of creeds, rebukes received  
Children are not what achievers need

Fractions and maths, sweet companions,  
equations and facts who always stand  
by as you go your road alone  
Annabelle in Numberland

You could have been my angel  
been my angel, been my angel and been with me  
You could have been my angel  
been my angel, been my angel and rescued me

Ghosts of me, ghosts of who  
i could be and been with you  
Ghosts of dreams, of who you thought  
you'd one day be when you grew up

Ghosts of breath, of little girls  
who promised, stressed they'd be their best  
Ghosts of days that fade away  
as failure holds your hand till Death

And deep in the place you escape where  
theorems and thoughts your hopes and plans  
all are derailed and then you failed them  
Annabelle in Numberland

Liquids and labs, fractions and facts,  
are all you had, all that you understand  
and as you age all that remains with  
Annabelle in Numberland

You could have been my angel  
Been my angel, been my angel and been with me  
You could have been my angel  
My angel, been my angel and rescued me  
My angel, my angel  
My angel and been with me  
My angel, my angel

NARRATOR:  
So Annabelle destroys her  
Doll, her beloved toy boy  
And takes all the notes that she made and packs them away

Thus Annabelle vows that she  
Won't tell a soul and stay lonely  
Defeated now she sadly creeps back to her lab

Thus friends we bid adieu to  
The 1st generation, but don't move  
We've 3 more Acts to get through, so come let's ensue

The future beckons and won't wait  
The next generation's on its way  
Dead things and broken love stories for us await


End file.
